Episode 443: How I focus when I have FOMO

I am someone who gets pretty major FOMO (fear of missing out), especially if I’ve joined a new course or program, or I found a new creator to listen to.

This can then expand to take up far too much of my time.

In today’s episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast, I wanted to share with you how I ensure I stay focused when I feel that my FOMO is really high.

Let’s dive in and focus instead of getting FOMO.

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I get FOMO really bad. Especially when I join a new program and I want to be the grade A student who does all the work, goes to every single call, looks at every single resource, and watches every single module.

This also happens when I find a new creator and I want to binge-listen to every episode of their podcast, or I want to ensure that I have checked out every one of their freebies.

My FOMO can show up in two different ways…

1. Overconsumption mode

Either I get into overconsumption mode, where I’m so fixated on absorbing as much as I can from that person that I don’t implement what it is that I’m learning, or I am so caught up in my FOMO that everything else in my business takes a back seat because I desperately want to be part of that program.

That showed up for one of the students in my Take Off program.

In one of the mentoring calls, this student was saying that because there are so many opportunities to get mentoring from me in the Take Off program, and there are also bonus side quests and resources, they felt like they needed to do absolutely everything and that they could spend 40 hours a week inside the Take Off program.

My FOMO is the same. When I’m in a new program, that desire to be in consumption mode spending so much time learning and listening means that I don’t even put anything in place. I’m not necessarily making progress.

I shared in that Take Off call some of the strategies that I use to focus rather than getting into that FOMO mode. But it also really reassured me that I am not the only one who gets into this state.

I thought this was a really beautiful opportunity to bring the conversation to the podcast, in case there are other people who may also get into that mode.

2. Shiny object syndrome

When I find a new mentor, listen to a new podcast, or join a new course, there might be a certain strategy that the person mentions that I can get distracted by.

The big risk for me is that I throw away and derail what I know already works in my strategy and what I already had planned to go and chase a shiny object, just because I’ve seen someone else do it or I’ve seen the potential for it to be quite successful.

Seeing as I’m more than 11 years into my business now, I know what works in my business and what my core strategies are.

If I’m throwing core strategies away, I can catch it, because I have the data and the evidence of what works best for me.

But for those who are early in their business journey, this overconsumption and turning into a shiny object syndrome can be difficult to spot, because on the surface it looks like you’re just trying a bunch of different strategies.

You don’t yet have one that is a proven winner.

This means you end up jumping from idea to idea, but in your brain, it can just look like you’re giving a bunch of different strategies a go.

In reality, the fear of missing out and jumping from strategy to strategy is actually stopping you from completing and seeing that strategy through and doing a good job of testing, measuring and reviewing the data to see what actually works and what doesn’t.

It’s critical when you find yourself in this sense of FOMO or you’re in overconsumption mode, that you are able to build your skills in identifying whether you’re seeing your strategies through.

Do you actually have the capacity for something new right now? Or are you abandoning something that could very well be your breakthrough (whether it be your breakthrough offer or your breakthrough strategy) to go and chase something else that may just be exactly the same result, or it may just be worse off for your business overall?

This takes a bit of practice, and it does take seeing things through.

Before I share with you my five strategies for focusing when I have FOMO, one thing I will say that I encourage you to do (especially if you join a new course or decide on a new strategy) is to go through and delete or unsubscribe from the content that talks about other strategies.

Let’s say you’ve decided that you’re going to embrace and pursue a low-ticket passive income strategy. You’re going to sell $29 to $49 courses that are self-study, and that is your core strategy.

I would recommend that you unsubscribe from anyone teaching high ticket. I would recommend that you unsubscribe from listening to podcasts where that is not the prevalent model.

The reason why I recommend that is because otherwise you’ll be spreading yourself thin and not really nailing any of the strategies.

If you’re half committed to high-ticket high-connection one-to-one, but in your mind, you’re also half committed to low-ticket disconnected marketing strategy, you’ll do neither of them well. You’ll ultimately end up deciding that the problem is either you, your messaging or something else that’s a bit vague. Then you just end up on this hamster wheel of trying to solve the problems that could just be solved by you making a commitment to what your model is moving forward.

It’s not forever, it’s just for now.

I mostly teach high-ticket and high-connection marketing strategies, particularly for people in the early stages of their business, because it’s the most profitable and it gets the quickest feedback. It allows you to refine your marketing and your messaging the quickest, but also it allows you to make a handsome income quite quickly.

That’s generally the strategy that I recommend for people in the early stages of business.

Because of that, if people are engaged in my programs but then make a decision that they’re going to instead focus on low-ticket strategies because they’re following someone else, then I will say to them that I recommend they unsubscribe from me, even if it’s just for six months.

I’m not attached to what strategy you choose.

Regardless of what it is that you choose, I want you to focus on that strategy.

(That’s not one of my tips below because I’m so far ahead in my business journey that I already know what works.)

If I decide to experiment with a little low-ticket strategy, I can very much pay attention to whether that low-ticket strategy is distracting from my core or whether it’s adding to my core results and adding to my core strategy.

Now that my business is very well established, I have proven launch strategies for my high-ticket programs. I have proven strategies that I can roll out whenever want or need to bring in a short-term cash injection.

I can very quickly identify whether experimenting with something new is an addition to my business and it’s adding my existing model, or if it’s just distracting me from my core business and my core strategy.

But if you aren’t at that stage of business, I would highly recommend that if you find yourself in FOMO mode and you find yourself spread thin, pick a lane and unsubscribe from everything else – even if it’s just temporarily.

Now let’s dive into my five strategies when I find myself in this over-consumption mode or shiny object syndrome due to my FOMO.

Strategy 1: Increase creation time, decrease consumption time

One of the very first signs for me that I’m in FOMO mode is that I spend more time per week consuming other people’s content than I do actually implementing strategy into my business.

Whenever I join a new course or program, a little rule of thumb that I set for myself is that 50% of the time that I set aside to do that course is for consumption, and 50% of that time is for creation.

If I listen to a 45-minute module, then I need to ensure I’m doing at least 45 minutes implementing that module to ensure that I’m not overconsuming and reducing my creation time.

I don’t turn my creation time completely up or turn my consumption time completely down. For me, one of the biggest drivers of creation is my consumption. Listening to content gives me that ideation and inspiration, so I am someone who likes to start my day consuming content.

I’ll listen to a podcast or an audiobook because listening to that content sparks my creativity. It sparks my desire to create my own things.

I just look at my balance of time.

What time am I spending each week in creation mode (ie. taking action and implementing)? And what percentage of my time each week am I spending in consumption mode?

If I find myself particularly in FOMO mode, I might make my consumption time 20% and my creation time 80%. I only listen to little chunks of things, and then I do a really big focus on implementation and creation.

Strategy 2: Cement my time purpose outside of my business

One of the risks when you’re in FOMO mode is that every waking hour then gets dedicated to either being in consumption mode or implementing this shiny object.

If I’m working 15 hours a week and then I find myself getting into FOMO mode, what I might find is that I creep up to 30 hours a week, but I almost justify it because I’m implementing this new course that I’ve purchased, or I’m focused on getting this new strategy implemented in my business.

Something that’s important to me is that a new strategy doesn’t equal a huge workload. It doesn’t equal overworking myself and stretching myself too thin.

When I join a new course or find myself getting into that FOMO, I knuckle down and nail down exactly what I’m going to spend my time on outside of my business.

My partner David and I do this really well already. We go for a fairly long bush walk most mornings, we walk the dogs every day, we have regular date nights, we love having special days where we’ll go to the movies in the middle of the day, or we’ll host friends and have a special dinner, even if it’s mid-week. We love going and exploring our local area, we love playing board games, we love doing puzzles, and we have Christmas movies and tv series that we want to be watching.

It’s important to us that we make sure we commit to what we’re going to be doing with our time outside of the business so that the business doesn’t just expand to take up the space that’s available.

Other things that help me are having my own interests outside of the business.

I’m really into pottery, and a trip down to the pottery studio is usually two to three hours. I also love working with a personal trainer (I work with Nez from NezFit – I highly recommend working with her! You can find her at nezfit.com.au).

Nez and I work together online, but then with the work that I do with Nez, I often have a little routine that I try and do a couple of times a week, even when I’m not working with her.

That is something that I can make sure I spend some time doing.

I also really love going for a drive to a cafe somewhere and doing a bit of journaling, or doing some personal development side rather than it being business-focused.

For me, just making sure I’ve got those boundaries in place and I’m really clear on what my intentions are to use my time outside of my business means that that scope creep doesn’t happen as much.

Strategy 3: I give myself a smaller to-do list

I want to ensure that when I am working on my business, I have a very clear purpose for the time that I’m investing. I’m less likely to set myself big long to-do lists if I am really clear on what the priority is.

As much as possible, I try and stick to three to four things on my to-do list each day. That’s it.

If I give myself a to-do list of ten things, then it’s going to overwhelm me. That overwhelm then creates decision fatigue.

Even though I’ve got the ten things mapped out, every time I look at the to-do list, I’m searching through to make a decision about what exactly it is that I’m going to do next. And so I’m creating decision fatigue, and I am less likely to finish that list in one day, and therefore I’m going to feel like I’m behind by the end of the day.

I keep my to-do list very tight and small at all times, and I ensure that that is maintained even when I find myself a new mentor or get excited by a new idea.

Strategy 4: Having more time face-to-face with my clients and my audience

Something that can distract me from being of service and doing the work I want to do in my business, is being overly focused on consuming from someone else and doing stuff that other people do.

But if I spend time with my clients (either in my Take Off program doing calls and reviewing people’s homework, doing Facebook Lives with my audience, or filling my calendar with one-to-one sessions with my clients), that really helps me to stay focused.

I stay focused on what my audience wants from me and what I’m delivering.

Especially where that FOMO shows up as shiny object syndrome, often the shiny object that I want to create is focused on an audience I don’t have yet or a product that my audience has not yet purchased.

I have no validated evidence that my audience wants it.

If I spend time with my audience, it keeps me focused in that creation mode. It keeps me focused on what my existing audience wants from me and what I want to deliver for my existing audience.

I try and fill my calendar so I have at least one client or one lead call each day. Having that conversation with that person or that group will spark ideas that I know my audience wants that are aligned with my existing strategy.

I also think it’s important to note here that being “busy” with clients, can be catastrophised for a lot of people.

If you have something to do with clients four days a week every week, a lot of people then start to worry and catastrophise about what’s going to happen when they have more clients.

But it’s not actually a problem yet. For most people, their resistance to spending time with their existing clients and their audience is because they’re worried about what happens if they need to do this twenty times a week.

But you haven’t even booked in three yet!

Let’s address that problem if and when it becomes a problem.

If I said to you right now that I can send you twenty hot leads every single week in your business for the next three months, would you really be upset by that?

You might catastrophise because, at the moment, the time that you spend with each lead is an hour and a half. But there are strategies we can put in place to ensure that we give that time some better boundaries and that the time you spend with each lead is reduced.

In fact, the more lead conversations you have, the better skilled and quicker you’ll get at identifying exactly what each lead needs from you and pitching your product or service to meet that need specifically in the language that’s going to work for them.

For a lot of people, their resistance to filling their calendar is not a real problem at this point.

If it does become a thing for you, we can easily solve that in the future.

I love to have lots of face-to-face time with my clients and audience because it reminds me that my FOMO is driven by a desire to go and reach people who may not want to work with me – my desire to go and talk to strangers on the internet.

But strangers on the internet are 1,000% less likely to buy something from me. They are the people who aren’t necessarily aligned with the type of work that I want to do. They’re not necessarily the niche that I want to work with.

I find that if I spend more time face-to-face with my clients, I just stay focused on what my strategy is and the people that I want to serve. It helps to reduce that FOMO and helps me to focus.

Strategy 5: Cowork on implementation

I might reach out to a couple of biz besties and let them know that I have a lot of things to implement and would love to have a coworking session if any of them are interested.

Then we get together on a Zoom call, we each set out what our action is going to be for that call, and then we turn our microphones to silent and get on with doing it.

For me, being neurodivergent, this works particularly well because it’s body doubling. It’s being present with someone else in the room, so we’re tuning into each other’s energy.

It keeps me focused, and it keeps me working on what I intended to work on. It creates a sense of accountability.

Coworking for me is also a really strong strategy to ensure that I am focused when I get myself into FOMO mode.

If this is something that you struggle with, and you feel like you’re jumping from strategy to strategy, one of the most powerful tools or templates that I have is one of my freebies.

It’s my Quarterly Plan on a Page.

I use this Quarterly Plan on a Page every single quarter in my business, and I have it on my desk in front of me every single day.

That way, if I do find myself jumping into new ideas or shiny objects, I can very quickly see if I’ve gotten off track from what I had intended to do. I can be intentional about that change of direction, or get back to what I had planned.

You can find that free planning template at: tashcorbin.com/qplan

Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the podcast!

Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.